


The Thousandth Man

by Ladymordecai



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Friendship, Gen, LGBTQ Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:36:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladymordecai/pseuds/Ladymordecai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia has a bad moment.  Fortunately, Steve is there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thousandth Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kittydesade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/gifts).



> Takes place in season three, sometime between "Don't Hate the Player" and "The 40th Floor."
> 
>  
> 
> Title is from the Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name. 

 

Myka and Pete were in Malta chasing after some cursed Roman coin, so even though she was on the no-fly list for Artifact-hunts involving possible psychosis, Claudia and Steve drew the short straw and headed for Aberdeen, Pennsylvania, and the St. George Psychiatric Facility.

  
Of course, the damn Artifact turned out to be one of the wooden batons from the Stanford Prison Experiment, and now she and Jinksy were locked in a windowless room in the basement with the Artifact-washed security guard outside the door. The creeper was even wearing seventies-style mirrored sunglasses.

  
"That totally should've tipped me off," she muttered, running her hands along the walls to try to find an alternate exit.

  
"What?" Steve asked from the other side of the room. Or what she thought was the other side of the room, anyway. Windowless basement rooms with burned out lightbulbs didn't do anything for Claudia's directional sense.

  
"The 'We're gonna need a bigger boat' sunglasses, really, Steve-o," Claudia said. "That look is carbon-dated."

  
"And now fashion makes it onto my need-to-know list as a Warehouse agent. Why not?" Steve's grumbling sounded half-hearted at best. They'd been awake for approximately a million hours and were reaching the point where their emotional range was limited to "re-caffeinated" or "cranky." (And the windowless room without a lightblub, shockingly, lacked an espresso machine.)

  
"Any luck?" Claudia heard her voice spike higher at the end and cleared her throat, hoping to disguise the tension-related pitch jump.

  
"Nothing. Plus I think I'm back where I started. This isn't that big a room, Claud." Scraping noises came from what was presumably Steve's direction, like he was shoving something heavy across the floor.

  
Claudia stumbled over a--something--in the dark and swore under her breath. So far the walls had yielded cinder blocks, cinder blocks, and more cinderblocks.

  
A trickle of nervous sweat slid down her back. What she wouldn't give for an evil mastermind disguised as an old guy chained up in the corner who knew the secret way out and would help them in exchange for a trip down the throat of a giant tiger's head made of sand. Steve would be smarter than Abu, she was sure, and they'd make it out without the whole river of lava flying carpet ride of death.

Probably.

  
"Keep looking! Maybe we missed something the first time around."

  
"Both of us?" Steve asked skeptically.

  
"Just do it." Claudia attempted an approximation of her usual who's-the-senior-agent-here deadpan, but she had the feeling her desperation showed through. She'd started referencing Disney movies, and that was never a good sign.

  
Another circuit of the dark, small, very dark space didn't change the results. One way out: the same way they'd been shoved in.

  
Claudia heard a sliding sort of noise. Oh. Steve was sitting down.

  
She could not sit down. No way. Pacing helped. If she could move, the room couldn't be that small, right?

  
"Okay, so we're not getting out of here on our own," Steve said. "The Artifact will make the guard open the door eventually, or he'll . . . go off-shift or whatever, and we'll escape. But for now--Jeez, will you sit down? You might be powered by Energizer batteries, but I'm not."

  
"Oh, it's not batteries, it's just sheer paranoia and the teensiest bit of panic. The last time I was shut in a dark room in a mental hospital wasn't great, and I'm not crazy, I know I'm not, but trying telling them that when you're seeing things other people can't see, when you're seeing your dead brother, well, then they don't like to let you out, and then they give you stronger medication, and if I was actually crazy that might've helped but I wasn't and it didn't and--"

  
"Claudia!"

  
Steve apparently had radar or something, because he reached right up in the pitch black and grabbed her hand, even though she was still pacing around the little room.

  
She froze.

  
Then it was like all the panic and the paranoia finally sapped her last reserves, because she collapsed onto the floor next to him, her hand still in his.

  
"I really don't like it in here, is all."

  
"You were . . . shut in a dark room?" he ventured after a minute. Claudia startled. Well, she was constantly putting her foot in it where his past was concerned, why shouldn't he get to poke into hers?

  
"I'm exaggerating, except that lights-out was enforced and they locked the hallway doors. We could get up and go to the bathroom or whatever, but--yeah. Dark room. Institution. Not my thing."

  
She heard the scraping sound of Steve moving, and then he squeezed her hand and let go. She bit her lip to bite off a protest--it was dark, it was just nice to know somebody was there--when she felt warmth and pressure all up her side and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Claudia pulled up her knees and unashamedly curled into Jinksy's side, resting her head on his shoulder.

  
"I read the file on the virtual reality video game."

  
Claudia groaned. "It was a gross exaggeration. It was a video game!"

  
"Good." Steve sounded relieved and satisfied. Claudia had a disorienting moment where she wondered if it was really going to be that easy, and then she remembered her partner's "I cannot tell a lie" thing.

  
Relief swept through her. Her time in the institution hadn't been all sunshine and puppies (except the occasional visiting therapy dog), but it hadn't been the stuff of horror movie asylums, either, and reassuring people who didn't quite believe that got wearing. With Steve, her word was enough.

  
"What are you doing reading my files, anyway?"

  
Steve was quiet for a moment, and Claudia could feel him weighing what to tell her.

  
"Out with it!" she demanded, mocking, but with a serious undertone.

  
He made an exasperated noise with which she was very familiar. Claudia grinned.

  
"I read all your files, okay? You're my partner."

  
"Aww, Jinksy, that's adorable," Claudia teased, but she meant it, too. Steve let out his breath in a huff.

  
Steve could tell when she lied, and didn't hold her chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome against her, and read her mission files, and wanted to make sure she was okay. Wanted to be her partner, though he would probably mock her about being senior agent until the end of time. He trusted her.

  
He trusted her, and Yoda help her, she trusted him, too. Enough to relax even in this hell-hole and nudge closer. What? Now that she wasn't panicking, she was cold.

  
Steve shifted to let her get comfortable, pulling his jacket open so she was leaning right up against his t-shirt and the jacket got between her and the cinderblocks. She closed her eyes, which somehow helped, even though it didn't actually change what she saw. She felt tension drift out of her partner, and his head rested on hers.

  
While it was definitely nice just to know somebody was there, it was a million times better then "nice" to know that somebody was Steve.

 


End file.
